D&D General Melf's Guide to Greyhawk: The Shield Lands

[FitzTheRuke]

I have it on good authority (my imagination), that Ayoub said a lot of nice things about you.

About me? (I know you were replying to mamba, but given the context, I choose to believe that you were talking about me.)

I feel vindicated! And loved.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

About me? (I know you were replying to mamba, but given the context, I choose to believe that you were talking about me.)

I feel vindicated! And loved.

Oh, man, he would not shut up about you ...

 

[pemerton]

I'm hopeful this is a full on separate book (think like that Exodus sci-fi game WotC produced but didn't create) and not "just" a supplement, so it can adjust the 5.5e rules to be closer to old-school styles while using the current D&D "engine". No tieflings/aasimar/goliaths/dragonborn/orcs as playable races, for example, since that doesn't fit Greyhawk (no "weird" races, period, just standard things including Half-Elves and Half-Orcs). Maybe automatically use some of the optional rules like short rest being 1 day and long rest being 1 week, that kind of thing.

If you want to play a game in which there are no Goliath PCs, or no Dwarven Wizards, then why not jus tplay it? I'm not sure why you need WotC to give you permission, or direction.

Likewise with the rest rules. I mean (i) these have already been published and (ii) you seem to have already set them out in your post. If you think they're good rules, why not just use them?

our GREYHAWK 1E games generally never had Orc player characer, and Orcs were rarely seen freely in even the largest cities, most often than not prisoners.

Those playing Half-Orc were assumred to be of the 10% sufficiently non-orcish to pass for Human.

The PhB (p 17) is pretty clear about PC Half-Orcs:

it is assumed that player characters which are of half-orc race are within the superior lo%,​

But the DMG is equally clear about the presence of a variety of (typically evil) humanoids in towns and cities: on p 191 a footnote to the City/Town Encounter Matrix notes that "If desired, 1 in 4 [ruffians] can be half-orc or of humanoid race (goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, orc)." This is consistent with the text from the GH setting that @Voadam quoted.

He said they will absolutely be doing things like having inherently Chaotic Evil Orcs

In AD&D, Orcs are Lawful Evil by default.

They won't really win back old-school fans who aren't happy with the current edition/tone unless they scale back some of the rules too IMHO. More than anything else, the issue is that most old-school players think the rules themselves don't lend themselves to a grittier style game, which is why they gravitate towards rules that emulate B/X or AD&D. If they don't fix that, this project is DOA.

Nothing could kill any interest in this product more than this for me

OSR players have a new retro clone coming out every other day but it's never enough. Won't be happy until they AD&D 3rd edition is made with all the racial limits, class restrictions and level caps back in place.

There's no reason at all to think this project is DOA unless it restates 25+ year old rules for building PCs and NPCs. Anyone who wants those rules, and want to play a game set in GH and using those rules, can already do so.

The market for this product is current D&D players, plus those who are nostalgic for GH material. I don't think the GH nostalgia crowd is all that big a market; so, to avoid being DOA, this produce needs to be purchased by a reasonable number of that first cohort.

 

[Nikosandros]

It would be interesting if he was able to bring back Dangerous Journeys (though I must confess I have NO idea who holds the rights to that game at this time).

Dangerous Journeys/Mythus was acquired by TSR and thus is owned by WotC. Before they "purged" all their PDFs from online stores, you could buy at least a couple of the books in the series. The PDFs never became available again, though (AFAIK).

Justin LaNasa has entered the chat

What has he to do with DJ?

 

[Parmandur]

The market for this product is current D&D players, plus those who are nostalgic for GH material. I don't think the GH nostalgia crowd is all that big a market; so, to avoid being DOA, this produce needs to be purchased by a reasonable number of that first cohort.

Well, given that the DMG has a fairly full (as in, about as much detail and info as the original Folio) presentation of Greyhawk as a Setting to run Campaigns, thing is newer players in the past two years have been primed to be open to borrowed Greyhawk nostalgia by WotC.

 

[Mannahnin]

Tolkien sort of invented non-portal fantasy (that is, what Lloyd Alexander called "High Fantasy"). Portal fantasy used to be the only game in town.

He certainly popularized it a lot, where before him portal fantasy was very common.

Of course Howard's Conan, Leiber's Fafhrd and the Mouser, and Vance's Dying Earth are not portal fantasy, and they predate LotR. All of these are mentioned in Appendix N, as well as a bunch of others which aren't Portal Fantasy (and some which are).

 

[Mannahnin]

In AD&D, Orcs are Lawful Evil by default.

Right. And in OD&D they could be Chaotic or Neutral.

And AD&D doesn't even say that all "characteristically" evil creatures are inherently so. The Monster Manual has this to say about monster alignments:

ALIGNMENT shows the characteristic bent of a monster to law or chaos, good or evil or towards neutral behavior possibly modified by good or evil intent. It is important with regard to the general behavior of the monster when encountered.

Which I read as indicating that this is the general, most common alignment, but that exceptions exist. "Bent" here is a synonym for "inclination" or "propensity".

And for concrete examples, we know famously from Gary's D3 Vault of the Drow, the Rakes encounter, that some dark elves can be of other alignments and opposed to their society's evil.

I know one of the guys who said he's on Luke's team has been running a campaign in greyhawk for around 46 years, and he said there is no WotC internal personnel involved, so I'm hopeful they will be able to actually do things and not be forced to shoehorn in 5.5isms where they don't belong. He said they will absolutely be doing things like having inherently Chaotic Evil Orcs, and no fey Hobgoblins, stuff like that, so I'm hopeful about them removing a lot of the WotC changes that were pretty inexplicable.

I would totally understand Greyhawk as a campaign world going back to some older concepts, getting away from newer ideas like Goblins or Hobgoblins having fey associations.

I'd be a little surprised if they went with inherently/invariably evil orcs, but I'm interested to hear more.

@Lord Gosumba is this something you can talk more about? Or no? Casual fan of your shows, BTW. I tune in occasionally and even won a module once.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I gotta say, the Pomarj is a lot more interesting when you don't say its residents are all inherently evil.

 

[Parmandur]

He certainly popularized it a lot, where before him portal fantasy was very common.

Of course Howard's Conan, Leiber's Fafhrd and the Mouser, and Vance's Dying Earth are not portal fantasy, and they predate LotR. All of these are mentioned in Appendix N, as well as a bunch of others which aren't Portal Fantasy (and some which are).

Well, they are not portal Fantasy...but they are also set in the future or past.

 

[Voadam]

Well, they are not portal Fantasy...but they are also set in the future or past.

Conan is past, Dying Earth is future, Lankhmar is neither.